Monthly Archives: June 2019

As a kid, I never had ambitious dreams. I did what was offered to me by life, which turned out to be a lot, but I never really had ambitious dreams. I wish I’d been more ambitious.

People tell me I was and am ambitious, but I know I wasn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I challenged myself and did a lot of hard things as a kid that enabled me to do harder things as a young man and as an adult until I got used to doing hard things as if they weren’t hard, but still I never had ambitious dreams.

While I recognize that you are engaged in evaluating the debates and probably don’t have time for anything else, I want to slip in a few comments about judgment.

What brings this to the fore in my V8 is the matter of President Trump deciding not to strike Iran in retaliation for having downed a US Air Force drone.

Here is a picture of the drone, a RQ-4A Global Hawk that is flown by three remote pilots, has the wingspan of a 737, flies at 500 MPH, carries ooooodles of tech gear to listen to and look at our enemies, and typically operates at 65,000 feet altitude.

[Big question — WTF was the Global Hawk doing operating at 22,000 feet over the Straits of Hormuz? That is within the capabilities of Iranian SAMs (surface-to-air missiles) to reach while if they had been at 65,000 feet, the Iranians could not have reached that altitude. Why?]Continue reading →

1. Shopify is a plug-and-play solution to getting you into the eCommerce business. Sign on with Shopify and you are in business as quickly as you can take pictures of your merchandise and put a price on it. Effortless. Streamlined.

2. As a software product, Shopify fulfills the promise of the Internet as a means of creating “digital real estate” whereon a tech savvy digital business woman (see what your “woke” Big Red Car did there?) can reach the entire world without having to undertake a huge tech effort to get her store open.

Gloomy day in the ATX, but then I am in the ATX, so how gloomy can it really be?

So I have been reading a book — 40 pages in, an easy read — by Jerry Collonna called: Reboot – Leadership and the Art of Growing Up.

Jerry is one of those Internet presences one meets and grows fond of. There is wisdom in his writing and there is a good heart in his chest. He comes to the issue of leadership primarily from the perspective of CEO coaching and has a huge following.

He is an emotional, Zen, Buddhist type of guy who will cry at the drop of a hat. I don’t see him doing much hunting or skydiving, but he is a mensch.

I recommend the book as a body of work that one should read, but I am not a fan of the emotional style and desperate nature of how he tells his story.

It is HIS story. It is not my story. It is a good story and it should be in the institutional memory of anybody who is serious about the leadership gig.

Go read the book, but when you do, I want you to know a few other things at the same time.